live music

OMG! Disneyâ€™s â€œHigh School Musicalâ€ is finally marching into San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts June 10 to June 15 and we are giving away a pair of free tickets to the opening night performance. Yay!

If you want to make the scene at the hottest tween trend-du-jour since the iPod, here’s the deal. Post a question for Arielle Jacobs, the star of the show, here and enter to win 2 free tickets to HSM on Tuesday June 10 at 7:30 p.m.

The best questions wins! (The winner will be notified by email by Friday June 6). Plus, Jacobs can answer it when she does her online chat at the Merc on Thursday June 12 from 4 to 430. Ready, set, post!

“Passing Strangeâ€ has pulled down the Obie Award for best new theater piece. The alt-rock tuner, which was developed at Stanford and debuted at Berkeley Rep, has also been nominated for 7 Tony Awards. Also of local note in the Obie realm, playwright David Henry Hwang was honored for “Yellow Face,” which was also workshopped at Stanford (where Hwang is an alum) and is slated for a production at the Rep. The Obie celebrates the world of off and off-off Broadway.

Huzzahs all around. Kudos are again in order for “Passing Strange.” The alt-rock musical, which was work-shopped at Stanford and debuted at Berkeley Rep before hitting Broadway, just keeps raking in the accolades. The hip new Tony-nominated tuner has won three Drama Desk Awards and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best musical. Tonight Stew and crew will rock the Obie Awards ceremony.

****

[photopress:Cassie_1.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

Brava also to Cassie Beck, popular local actress and co-artistic director of San Franciscoâ€™s adventurous Crowded Fire theater company, who just won a Theatre World Award for her New York debut in Adam Bock’s “Drunken City.” Beck originated the Bridezilla role at TheatreWorksâ€™ New Works Festival, where the play was developed. It’s also a testament to the Peninsula troupe where a longstanding commitment to new works is starting to pay off handsomely. Local theater buffs will note that Beck’s husband Kent Nicholson, with whom she runs Crowded Fire, also happens to be director of new works at TheatreWorks.

****

Speaking of bold new works, check out the Playwrights Foundation’s free presentation of Liebe Wetzel and Trevor Allen’s latest theatrical experiment “One Stone.” Billed as a “found object puppetry play inside the mind of Albert Einstein,” this puppet fantasia will be staged tonight at Stanford and tomorrow night at San Francisco’s A Traveling Jewish Theatre. It’s a work-in-progress that lasts about an hour. No strings attached! (photo credit: berkeley rep, crowded fire)

“Passing Strange” has rocked its way from its birth in the Bay Area to seven Tony nominations including best musical.

The outrageous alt-rock musical, which riffs on the life and times of the musician known as Stew, also received Tony nominations on Tuesday for best book, best original score, best performance by a leading actor (Stew), best performance by a featured actor (Daniel Breaker), best performance by a featured actress (de’Adre Aziza) and best orchestrations.

A funkadelic trip through an African-American man’s coming-of-age while traveling abroad, “Passing Strange” was work-shopped at Stanford University in 2006 and was later co-produced by New York’s Public Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where the tuner debuted before blowing Broadway away. Directed by Annie Dorsen and showcasing an eclectic score by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the genre-pushing musical is currently running at the Belasco Theatre with its original cast.

One of the few musicals the Rep has ever staged, let alone help produce on Broadway, “Passing Strange” appealed to artistic director Tony Taccone’s desire to harness a rambunctious rock concert vibe on stage. Never a fan of traditional musicals, Taccone knew “Passing” had the pop culture street cred to be a musical for people who think they hate musicals.

[photopress:51WzXxiueZL._SL500_AA240_.jpg,thumb,alignright]Though he’s pretty much a full-pledged Denver man at this point, local guy Cory “Dr. Noize” Cullinan still has many ties to the Peninsula — including his cool mom (and probably number one fan) Leola. So he’s more than pleased to return to perform and appear in support of his children’s music and book.

I caught the tail end of his solo acoustic set yesterday at the Learning Game “educational superstore” in Cupertino and got to speak with him for considerably longer. The concert was markedly different from what I’d heard before; the lively conversation was not.

Apparently “Passing Strange” just got bumped from a pre-Tony Awards concert special on CBS because the lyrics to the song “We Just Had Sex” were deemed too naughty for the TV audience to handle. Variety reports that the song was deemed “inappropriate for telecast by CBS’ standards and practices.”

Now, ”Passing Strange,” the alt-rock musical which debuted at Berkeley Rep before scorching up Broadway, is indeed far hipper than the usual tuner on the generally homogenous Great White Way but one still wonders if the TV audience is actually as dainty (have you seen “The Shield” lately, people? HELLO!) as the studio suits seem to think.

Tony aficionados should note that if the musical is officially nominated for an award (on May 13), Stew and crew will have to perform a different song for the real-deal Tony telecast (June 15) which will be hosted by Whoopi Goldberg.

Attend how the tale of Sweeney Todd gets ground up with “Avenue Qâ€™â€™-ish allusions and â€œThelma and Louiseâ€™â€™-style empowerment in Dan Wilsonâ€™s wonderfully cheeky homage to the macabre Stephen Sondheim tuner. A rough-and-tumble black-box sensibility only heightens this funkadelic fringe theater experience. Low budget-inventiveness pays high dividends here. Smart lyrics, a tart post-girl power attitude and an impassioned lead performance make this â€œSweetie,â€™â€™which runs through May 24 at San Francisco’s Exit Theatre, a kitschy black comedy treat for musical theater mavens.

Our heroine, Tanya (Kate Austin-Groen)shuffles into a Mission district coffeehouse with her hoodie up and her spirits low. She crashed and burned her Financial District career with a sexual harassment lawsuit that cost her every last hawked-up-her-eyeballs penny and earned her nothing but bitterness and rage about the way a strong woman gets shafted in a manâ€™s world. Itâ€™s not until she lands a nowhere job as an espresso jockey and her chipper galpal Kim (Alexis Wong) gets raped by one of the cafeâ€™s legion of testosterone-fueled losers and abusers that Tanya finds her calling as a purveyor of finely-brewed justice. The sleazy customer base, from the Bluetooth zombies to the wannabe hipsters, and the tip-stealing, pelvis-thrusting are just crying out for a little â€œmeat pieâ€™â€™ retribution. Yum!

[photopress:about_img4.gif,thumb,alignright]If you’re beating yourself with your “Lord of the Rings” action figures for missing the chanceÂ to buy tickets to May 27 Flight of the Conchords show, needn’t fret: The dynamic kiwi stars of their own HBO comedy series will return for an 8 p.m. May 29 performance at the Davies Symphony Hall, 401Â Van Ness Ave., in San Francisco. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday at $32.50 a pop; Â (408) 998-8497,Â www.ticketmaster.com.

Tickets for the first Conchords show at the Nob Hill Masonic Center disappeared faster than moa at top speed, and with good reason: The series is one of the buzz shows among die-hard comedy fans. Stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, who bill themselves as “New Zealand’s fourth most popular digi-folk paradists,” have a dry, absurdist sense of humor that is perhaps best appreciated through their music. Their wonderfully satirical ditties are catchy, smart and better than just about anything on iTunes. Here’s a sample of one of their best: “Business Time”Â [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU[/youtube]

Better catch them live while you can — McKenzie and Clement are scheduled to begin production on the second season of “Flight of the Conchords” for HBO in the fall.

Jeune Lune, a Minneapolis-based ensemble widely hailed for their revival of Moliereâ€™s â€œThe Miserâ€™â€™ last year, is famous for casting off on adventures but â€œFigaroâ€™â€™ takes their experimental aesthetic over the top to scoff against the dictates of form. Here Epps and Serrand cleverly stitch together bits of the Figaro narrative from Mozartâ€™s operas (notably â€œThe Marriage of Figaroâ€™â€™) to Beaumarchaisâ€™ trilogy (â€œThe Guilty Motherâ€) but, alas, the marriage of opera and theater does not go happily ever after.

Beaumarchaisâ€™ theatrical frame fits awkwardly over Mozartâ€™s arias. A note of chilly elegance too often seeps into the dramatic segments, which can be off-putting, while the music invokes sheer sonic bliss. This dissonance undermines the glorious eccentricity of this unlikely pairing, which runs through June 8 at Berkeley Rep.

Serrand, who also directs, lets â€œFigaroâ€™â€™ reverberate like an echo as the elderly Count (Serrand), a figure of abject helplessness, twitches like an infant as Figaro, or Fig, (Epps) tends to his every need. As the two old men reminisce, their memories of their lost youth pop into existence right along side them. They remember the count as a dashing young cad (Bradley Greenwald) neglecting his beautiful wife (the luminous Jennifer Baldwin Peden) right up until they both get entangled in a coup-de-tittilation with the flirty rake Cherubino (Christina Baldwin), the apple of Figaroâ€™s eye Susanna (Momoko Tanno) and the title rogue himself (Bryan Boyce).

Unfortunately the musical scenes captivate so entirely, the singers bend the notes with such passion, that it highlights the lack of an emotional connection onstage in between the arias. The opera portions of the evening, despite their technical artifice, have an emotional authenticity that the rest of the staging lacks. Despite Serrandâ€™s exquisite mastery of slapstick, thereâ€™s not quite enough comedy here to buoy the show through its inert patches. When Figaro sits all alone and bemoans his fate, his face magnified onto a video screen, the moment feels a bit indulgent.

Sometimes itâ€™s almost as if this â€œFigaroâ€™â€™ is trying to keep us at armâ€™s length, by backflipping to and fro through time and switching tone and motif on a dime. The contrast between opera and theater, classic narratives and multimedia, can throw the viewer off-balance. And some of the riffs on America, the Dubya jokes and â€œWho Wants to be a Millionaire?â€™â€™ bits, feel out of place.

Still, the wedding of high-tech and high opera has its beauties. Serrand projects the most tender moments onto a gigantic video screen. One startling tableaux after another teases the eye. Almaviva sadly drags his wife the Contessa along on a rose-strewn barge. Susanna hides under the hem of her mistressâ€™ dress. A singerâ€™s mouth arches triumphantly over a note. These images may distract us from the live performers before us but that makes them no less hypnotic.

The camera caresses their faces like a lover, always hovering, always rapt. Itâ€™s an intimacy thatâ€™s hard not to envy in a â€œFigaroâ€™â€™ that too often thwarts our affections.

Performing their warm, trademark brand of â€œMusic for Children,â€ the three delightful McDonalds will be joined by a host of friends including guitarist Carol McComb, steelpan drummer Jim Munzenrider, multi-stringed instrumentalist Nori Tagawa and saxophonist Kristen Strom. Juliette is also CSMAâ€™s Preschool Art and Music Program Coordinator, so itâ€™ll be extra special to see her holding court on her home bandstand.